Monthly Archives: June 2012

About 1,000 people were detained and hundreds injured -- many by tear gas -- during anti-regime protests on Friday in Sudan, an activist group said on Saturday’s anniversary of President Omar al-Bashir’s coup. The information minister called the protesters “rioters” who threaten the country’s stability. “Some were arrested and released,” said an official

Switzerland has refused to take back a Jordanian refugee who had been given asylum after he was convicted of links to Islamist rebels in Somalia, officials announced on Saturday. “The Jordanian citizen ... arrested in Kenya, may not enter Swiss territory until further notice,” said the Federal Justice Ministry in Bern in a statement.

The Pentagon dropped war crimes charges against a Kuwaiti prisoner at Guantanamo on Friday amid reports the United States and Kuwait were in talks to repatriate the last two Kuwaitis held there. Kuwait is a U.S. ally and the Gulf state’s parliament has condemned the continued detention of its citizens, Faiz al Kandari and

More than 50 civilians and 23 military personnel have been killed by mines sown by al-Qaeda since the militants were chased out of areas of south Yemen on June 13, the defense ministry reported on Saturday. “More than 50 citizens have been killed by mines planted by the terrorists before they fled Zinjibar, Jaar

A Mali-based Islamist group Friday claimed responsibility for a dawn attack against the regional headquarters of the paramilitary police in the center of the Algerian town of Ouargla in which one person was killed and three were wounded. The Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa (MUJAO) said in a text message to

Egypt has seized a large weapons consignment, including Grad rockets, that had been smuggled from Libya and could have been headed to the Gaza Strip, press reports said on Saturday. The haul, which included 138 Grad rockets and a further 139 Grad warheads, was made in the Mediterranean coastal town of Marsa Matruh, not

Hundreds of thousands of Afghans face the threat of deportation back to their war-torn country from Pakistan once a deadline expires Saturday, but Kabul is crying foul over the move. Pakistan is home to 1.7 million refugees and hundreds of thousands more unregistered migrants from its neighbor, according to the U.N. High Commissioner for

Islamist governments which were swept to power in the Arab Spring uprisings must ensure that democracy becomes firmly rooted across the region, novelist Amin Maalouf said on Friday. “The people who have come to power must now be made responsible,” the French-Lebanese writer told Reuters. “We have to firstly tell them that they have

During his election campaign, Egyptian president-elect Mohammed Morsi reiterated his commitment to jihad and to the Islamic sharia law. Morsi made the remarks in a speech broadcast on May 13 on the Egyptian Misr 25 television network. His remarks in Arabic were uploaded to YouTube, and were later translated to English by the Middle

The Syrian army has gathered roughly 170 tanks near the Turkish border, Syrian rebels said Friday. Rebels told international media that forces are gathering north of Aleppo. “The tanks are now at the Infantry School. They're either preparing to move to the border to counter the Turkish deployment or attack the rebellious (Syrian) towns